Somnium Space raises $1M to expand VR platform

Somnium Space, the studio behind the titular social VR platform, announced they’ve successfully completed a $1 million seed round, something the company says will help them “further strengthen its development of a huge-scale Persistent, Open and Social Virtual Reality world.”

Somnium Sace is also opening its offices in Prague this month, the same city that boasts VR developers Beat Games, LIV, and Vrgineers (creators of XTAL).

Before the company’s current seed round, Somnium Space had raised over $200,000 by selling virtual land via two successful crowdfunding campaigns. As a result, the studio says that “hundreds of landowners” are getting ready to reserve parcels across Somnium World, and that many have already begun building their own experiences and structures in order to import them to their land parcel later this year.

“Our ultimate goal is to bring a long-lasting dream of humanity to fully immerse themselves into a huge world which is constantly changing and is never same no matter when you decide to join.” said Artur Sychov, founder & CEO of Somnium Space.

“Ability to create a functioning economy within virtual reality world is a dream and an internal goal we have at Somnium. This round of funding allows us to bring many more features into Somnium Spacefaster, in order to empower creators to start shaping the world of everyone’s dreams. I am more than ever convinced in the bright future of Social VR and we are going to do everything we can to make that vision to a reality very soon.”

Somnium Space is available for free via Steam, and supports SteamVR headsets such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows VR headsets.

While the platform is decidedly lacking in graphical detail, the studio however plans on releasing what they call a “completely new version” to the general public very soon, something that’s said to include higher fidelity graphics, more refined interaction and avatars system, building capabilities with a large persistent map, in-game store, and “many more features” coming this summer.

The studio further announced that an Oculus Go version is planned for a Summer 2019 release, and an Oculus Quest version is coming later this year.